The Guardian
Wow, this is some awful antisocial behavior from a company (and marketing firm) that should know better. Can we have one or two ad-free spaces?
advertising
The Guardian
Vox
How those annoying ad blocks at the bottom of every article you read online work. Chumbox is the perfect name for them. I think the more we learn about how these things prey on our psyche the more immune we become.
ps. Corn, maybe.
ps. Corn, maybe.
pi-hole.net
I'm a big fan of goofing around with a Raspberry Pi. At times I've used mine as a game emulator, media center, and caller ID server. Recently it has been sitting in a box, but now it's a DNS server that blocks ads on my home network thanks to Pi-hole. Pi-hole is software you install on a raspberry pi that filters the addresses you or your devices request through shared lists of known advertisers. It's simple to set up and it just works. I'm seeing 98% fewer ads across the web—no browser ad-blocker required. Once installed it has a nice web admin interface and it gives you statistics about which domains have been blocked. (8.7% of all my DNS queries have been blocked as I write this.) It was also easy to add my favorite ad-supported sites to a whitelist so they'll still get paid. It does bother me that this kind of tool leads to a nerds vs. everyone else experience (great interview, btw) but tracking, malware, and general browsing performance has gotten so bad due to ads that we need these tools. If you already have a tiny computer, Pi-hole plus an hour to set it up on a weekend will improve your web experience.
click-vanishing ads idea
The past week or so on Metafilter, Matt has had a note about registering to vote at the top of every comments page. You can disable the notice by clicking a link saying you're already registered—this sets a cookie to let the MeFi server know the note shouldn't be displayed for you anymore. It's very simple, and if ads are going to fund the web (grumble) why not try commercial click-vanishing ads like this? I bet people would be willing to click on ads at sites they frequent if they know that doing so will make the ad disappear for a limited time. It would be easier for readers than blocking the image server, or using other technical tricks to defeat ads, advertisers could get more click-throughs, and both sides could acknowledge openly that ads are annoying. With click-vanishing ads I'd see them and think, "hmm, there's another ad. Better click it to get rid of it."